Kids Galore at Kidzania!

It was a brilliant Thursday morning and the first day of PSLE Oral Examination. I'd thought that it was an ingenius idea to take Baby and her cousin to Kidzania since:

1) it was a weekday

2) most parents would not think of the same idea as I did

What a surprise the genius me had! One of the nastiest queues I had ever seen at Kidzania at 10am, the opening hour! Apparently, half the Singapore population had the same idea!

We entered Kidzania at about 10.30am. Then we proceeded to the second level to get the Pazzport done. The making of the Pazzport took up another half an hour, so we only started our Kidzania activties at 11am.

The pilot job is an ultra-hot job at Kidzania Singapore so I made it clearly to the kids that we were going for the pilot job the first thing we reached Kidzania. Both kids were clueless about what the job entailed but agreed with me anyway.

We were instructed to queue for a Queue Card in front of the Kindergarten. It was distributed at 11.30am so a 30-minute wait was not too bad.

The Queue Card allows you to go away to try other jobs before coming back at a specific timing for the pilot job. 

We headed to the Health Institute on the same level to be Health Researchers because it was a mere 20-minute wait - probably the shortest ever queue we had ever seen in this crazy place! Their turn is next! 

Hands had to be washed and sanitised first.

Making liquid soap

The kids got to bring home a travel-size shower cream.

After all the waits, the kids were hungry. So we went for a break at KFC which was incidentally the cheapest eating place for a full meal at Kidzania!

 

Back to waiting in the pilot queue

First Officer in action 

After 2pm, the wait became longer, but still bearable compared to their first visit.

Queuing at the A&E Department to be paramedics

The perk of being paramedics!

While the rest were focused on attending to a patient, the two of them were checking out the first aid box!

"This is how a broken arm should be bandaged."

 

We headed over to Sticky on the first level to learn about the process of candy-making.

"Chop. Chop. Chop."

While most job stations pay the children a small amount of kidzos for the work they do, this station requires children to pay 10 kidzos as they get to bring home the candies.

Happy with the candies

 

At Abbot, the kids took up the role of Food Scientists to learn about the milk powder making process.

Mixing the ingredients together

Powder creation and germ-removal process

She insisted on drinking the milk she made when she got home!

The mascot appeared at the end of the day to join in the song-and-dance ritual.

I always get them to go to the bank to withdraw all their kidzos at the end of the day. They can bring them home or shop at the Kidzania Store to see if there was anything they fancy.

The boy bought a tiny souvenir for a 100 kidzos which Baby didn't think was worth the penny. She was saving up for a bigger-ticket item.

As it was a Thursday, the kid's city closed at 5pm and every job recruited its last batch of children at 4pm or thereabout. The two little imps only managed to complete five jobs. However, if I think about it, when they had up to 7pm to play around the last visit, they only completed six jobs and each job had an average waiting time of 45 minutes to one-hour. The popular ones even kept us waiting for 1.5 hours! I would conclude that the queues on a Thursday were definitely shorter. 

The shorter time span was actually better for the kiddos as they were not as exhausted as they were on their visit. They had the energy to run and discussed animatedly about the jobs they did, especially the pilot job, after the visit this time round.

Everytime I go to Kidzania Singapore, I learn something new. The last time I visited, I learnt that I should have got their Pazzport done at the first visit as you would lose all the stamps you could have earned for the jobs you do at the first visit if you only get that done on the subsequent visit.

This time, I bought 8 pictures including their soft copies for a whooping $140. However, I later realised that there was an unspoken option of buying 15 soft copies for $60 and I could have bought the 8 soft copies for $60 as well but as the staff there were predictably inflexible, the lady at the cashier's said,"We have printed the pictures." as if the printing cost a bomb, and did not allow me to change to soft-copies-only option even though I had not paid yet.

So if you are going to Kidzania Singapore, do opt for the choice of purchasing soft copies at $60 instead of overpaying for a few hard copies for so much more!